Are More FAs Singing the Pink Slip Blues?

It isn’t such a long time since last year’s market rollercoaster, which may explain the investor distrust of advisors that’s surfaced in a recent poll sponsored by data aggregator ByAllAccounts. Of the 195 investors surveyed, nearly 63 percent said there was a chance they would fire their advisor in the next 12 months.

The level of disgust was broken down as follows: 38 percent said there was a 10 to 25 percent chance of canning the advisor; 18 percent said there was a 50 percent chance; and a little over 7 percent said there was a 75 to 100 percent chance.

The poll was done online last month with Paladin Registry of Financial Professionals. The investors had a minimum of several hundred thousand dollars to invest; they were chosen from investors who had used Paladin’s website to enlist its help in finding advisors to aid in managing their money.

No love lost: nearly 45 percent of investors polled indicated they had fired a financial advisor in the past, the poll said. The chart below offers the reasons. As bad as the numbers looked, advisors who offered “holistic advice” (defined as covering all client assets) generally fared better than those who didn’t, the survey said.

Rotten market outcomes don’t necessarily have to spell the end of a good client-advisor relationship, as Registered Rep. practice management guru Matt Oechsli explains. He offers some tips here for working with clients in the next crisis.